SA Firefighter

Quote from: BundyBear on January 17, 2010, 06:39:38 AM

Hmmmm I think we would get arrested Alan and the general public especially the lycra wearing bike pedalling cafe latte types would be in tears!

 

On what charge ?
A bunch of brigades just happened to go for a training drive which found
themselves in the city at around the same time. Everyone wearing seatbelts,
obeying road rules, etc, etc.
They might stop to compare vehicles with colleagues & do a quick truck check
(including a siren test)?
They might do a couple of laps of Vicky Sq - you just never know when you
might have to do a COQ to station 20.

And everyone knows that our baggy daggy yellows are a much more better chick-
magnet than lycra, especially we more generously proportioned older members.
 

Marysville evacuation 'not considered during Black Saturday fires'
Article from: AAP

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October 07, 2009 11:54am

FIRE authorities in charge of the Black Saturday inferno that wiped out Marysville did not consider sending firefighters to evacuate the town or protect locals sheltering at the oval, the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission has heard.

Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) officers running the incident control centre based at Alexandra knew at 5.55pm that people were gathered at Gallipoli Park in Marysville.

But Andy Miller, a DSE incident controller at the centre until 5.30pm, told the commission that evacuation and protection of the refuge was not considered.

Mr Miller was one of two officers based at the control centre who were put in charge on February 7, despite their lack of qualifications to deal with a major fire. Mr Miller was only a Level 1 incident controller on the day, but he was put in charge of the Alexandra centre which is supposed to operate at Level 3 - the highest level.

He had never had to deal with evacuations, Mr Miller told the commission, and was not aware it is the responsibility of incident controllers to order evacuations.

A level 3 incident controller was not put in place until the following day, despite the fact there was a qualified person living just 1km from the Alexandra centre.

The commission has also heard that for the first hour after the fire broke out, from 3pm to 4pm, neither the DSE or the Country Fire Authority knew who was in charge of the fire and both agencies were acting completely independently of each other.

The commission has previously heard that the inferno, known as the Murrindindi fire, was out of control within minutes.

Mr Miller said he knew by 4pm that the first attack on the fire had failed.

• Pre-emptive level 3 activation hadnt occured.
• Interagency co-operation failed.

SA public service jobs face the axe
Article from: The Advertiser

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RUSSELL EMMERSON, STATE POLITICAL REPORTER

February 02, 2009 04:30pm

JOBS will be axed so departments can meet the State Government's savings targets.

The Department of Environment and Heritage will target jobs to meet millions of dollars of savings over the next four years, chief executive Allan Homes told a Parliamentary Committee today.

"There is an inevitability that reductions of that magnitude will result in a reduction in staff numbers," chief executive Allan Holmes said.

"But it is no doubt it is challenging to meet those savings."

The department is slated to cut $7.7 million from its budget by 2012 – plus another $3.8 million required by December's Mid-Year Budget Review.

Reducing programs and staff was the only way to achieve this target, Mr Holmes told the Budget and Finance Committee.

But he said government termination packages would not be made available to all staff, with the Government promising only that staff cut in the Budget Review round would have access to packages.

Committee chairman, Liberal MP Rob Lucas, said it was "a recipe for chaos".

"What you're going to have is some members of the public service will be offered TVSP (targeted voluntary separation packages) over the next two to three weeks . . . and there will be other job cuts which won't be offered those same packages," he said.

A State Government spokesman said details of the packages – including their scale and who they would apply to - would not be released until 2009-10.

Public Service Association general secretary Jan McMahon said Mr Holmes's evidence showed a common trend across all departments in the bid to meet savings targets – and of politicians wanting to portray cuts as agency decisions.

"We understand that is it sommon across all agencies and that if politicians want to force cutbacks, it is proper they take the political decision about what community services they want cut," she said.

"Any further cuts forced by government will have a negative impact on community services."

Mr Holmes said the department was investigating programs that could be cut as a result of technological change, or areas in which government services were now provided by the private sector.

The department's mapping services, for example, were now adequately covered by services such as Google Earth, he said.